The Age of Longing (First edition: London: The MacMillan Co., 1951) The Age of Longing is a novel centered around the theme of faith and loss of faith, and set in France at the eve of a Soviet invasion of Europe. High contrast is drawn between the decadent West and the powerful and aggressive Soviet Union, and by many regards it is a product of the Koestler the Cold Warrior, i.e. Koestler in its years of strongest anti-Soviet political struggle. The novel, although politically outdated with its dark pessimism about the fate of Europe as a prey of the Soviet Union (the beginning of the invasion acts as a curtain and closes the book), can still be an interested reading because of several characters depicting first-rate contemporaries of Koestler, such as Sartre, Camus and Koestler himself.